Barbecue is good for us.

Now, don’t scoff right away, give me a chance to explain. Cooking Light is a fairly good magazine, at least where recipes are concerned. As a magazine it’s largely geared towards women, so there’s lots of articles on facial scrubs, sports bras, yoga, etc. But we have found some truly great recipes in there. Unlike most other ‘health’ magazines, they don’t take all the flavor and goodness out of food. I don’t want to die of a heart attack of high blood pressure any more than the next guy, but there’s no way around this: fat is what makes BBQ good. Without fat you get dry, tough meat. Cooking Light seems to get this. Their thing is to make a dish healthier without taking out the ingredients we love.

And, as it happens, a feature in their July issue is all about BBQ. They do a nice job of giving a sense of what I tend to think of as the four major types of American BBQ: Kansas City, Memphis, Carolina, and Texas. (Of course, there’s many other wonderful variations. I’m just saying, for your average Joe, these are the 4). There are some good starter recipes that you’ll want to doctor up, but the discussion has quite a bit of nuance. For example, they go into some detail on the differences in using wood chips vs. wood chunks for smoke and the variations between East and West Carolina BBQ.

Sadly, I couldn’t find the feature on their website – just a few random BBQ recipes that are nothing special. It might be worth the news-stand price, but at the least flip through next time you pass by the magazine rack.

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